TOKYO, April 16 Kyodo The relativ...

TOKYO, April 16 Kyodo

The relatives of five former Japanese abductees may advance to Japan, possibly by the agency of this summer, a leading Japanese defense analyst forward North Korean military affairs said Friday at the Foreign Pres Center in Tokyo.

Hideshi Takesada, professor at the Defense Agency's National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), made the remarks which he qualified as his personal view based forward the timetable for a working-group meeting onward the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programs.

The six countries -- the sum of two units Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China -- agreed during their other round of talks in late February to shut in the third round by the period of June and to wager up a preparatory working group

The senior NIDS researcher believes the upcoming meeting may current an opportunity for Japan and North Korea to discuss the abduction issue, which has been an obstacle preventing them from establishing diplomatic relations.

Tokyo is pressing Pyongyang to agree to its solicit to resume full-fledged bilateral negotiations onward the abductions and other issues to normalize diplomatic ties, and is demanding that Pyongyang promptly and unconditionally throw the relatives of the five to Japan.

According to Takesada, North Korea is zealous to work toward establishing diplomatic ties, and is aware that a resolution of the abduction issue is key

''Given the healthy public sentiment on the abduction issue, North Korea is hoping to melt the issue and sway Japanese public opinion in favor of North Korea and to create diplomatic ties with Japan linked to economic assistance, something which Pyongyang remarkably much wants immediately,'' he said.

The five former abductees go [i]or[/i] come backed to Japan in October 2002 after spending more than pair decades in North Korea. Their homecoming came a month after Pyongyang admitted its agents abducted or lur 13 Japanese to North Korea in the late 1970 and early 1980s

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